This volume would act as a great introduction to PKD for those unfamiliar with his work. All his main themes are represented and the average standard of the stories is very high. I'd read most of them before in one place or another but none of it was time wasted for me.
We Can Remember it for You Wholesale: The inspiration for the much more catchily titled film, Total Recall. The number of films based on PKD stories and novels is pretty big. Stephen King might be top of that tree, though.
This is a short story in e-book form, probably transcribed into some project like Project Gutenberg from its original existence in a science fiction periodical, though there's no indication of provenance whatsoever in the version provided free by Kindle. An internet search uncovers that it was apparently published in December 1953 in the magazine Science Fiction Adventures, Given the date of publication, and the fact that Dick didn't die until 1982, I suspect the copyright status of the free version on Kindle may also be a bit questionable.
The story is of the sub-genre "banal ordinary life with a dire secret", and it has a twist ending of the sort that no-one of my generation would fail to predict.
Dick doesn't try very hard with his aliens - they are just standard winged creepy-crawlies who can adopt a human body - but that is not the point of this short work. It is the insidiousness of the takeover (not unlike the silent undermining of a house by termites, if you think about it) that provides the horror - that, and the primary image of a hanging body in a public place to which no-one pays any attention whatsoever.
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